The Fix’d Foot
by Tiamat's Child
Summary: Perceptor has never been able to get Beachcomber to do anything. Not for his own good, and not for the good of the world.


**Title: **The Fix'd Foot  
**Author:** Tiamat's Child  
**Character: **Beachcomber, with Perceptor insisting on making his opinion known.  
**Word count: **1,444 words  
**Rating/Warning:** G  
**Disclaimer: **I do not own Transformers!  
**Group/Theme: **For the 7minibots community on Livejournal Theme set: The Seven Major Chakras – Prompt: Muladhara (governs stability and survival)  
**Summary: **Perceptor has never been able to get Beachcomber to do _anything_ . Not for his own good, and not for the good of the world.

**The Fix'd Foot**

Beachcomber had the unique quality of always being readily found by students and eternally elusive to all faculty save Perceptor, who could barely go two steps without tripping over him.

Usually he couldn't, at any rate. Today, no matter how he looked, he couldn't seem to find the mech at all.

Perceptor poked into Beachcomber's office. No Beachcomber at his desk. No Beachcomber at his lab table. No Beachcomber under his lab table. No Beachcomber in his closet.

He'd resorted to checking the vaulted ceiling when he was interrupted by a gentle "Ahem," from the door. He turned, smiling sheepishly at Moraine, one of the geology students.

"Ah," he said, "Well!"

"He's in your office, Professor," Moraine said.

Perceptor stared at her.

She shrugged. "I thought you must be looking for Professor Beachcomber. He's in your office."

"…May I ask…?"

There was a certain disconcerting self-assuredness about Moraine, a sense that her responses were all for your sake. It made Perceptor just a bit uncomfortable, particularly when she tilted her head at him. "He leaned out to wave to me."

"Ah. Yes. Of course."

Beachcomber was, in fact, cross-legged on Peceptor's floor. He was looking at nothing, his optics online, the center column of his body straight.

"You're avoiding me," Perceptor said, leaning against his door frame.

"That's unfair," Beachcomber said, quiet and lazy, "I'm waiting for you."

"You know no one can ever find you when you do that," Perceptor told him, and stepped into his office. It was annoying, the way Beachcomber was basically inviting him to loom over him.

He sat down on the floor, across from Beachcomber. He was still taller, but at least he wasn't looming.

"Hey," Beachcomber said, with a small, delighted smile, "Good to see you."

Perceptor ignored him. "Come with me."

"Aw, Perceptor, do we have to do this again?"

"Yes. We will keep doing it until you agree or I leave."

Beachcomber had taken Perceptor out, a few nights before, to the great height of the upper tower, the astronomy tower, where telescopes came and went, and the winds were strong and clean in the ever chilly air.

"Look," he'd said, as he spread his arms and turned, slow, careful steps in the narrow space. "See how many people live in our world."

"I know how many there are," Perceptor told him, in the tone of someone who did indeed know, and knew all the necessary calculations to readjust the statistics as necessary, "They need you."

Beachcomber shrugged. "Maybe they do, but they don't need me the way you think."

Perceptor stepped forward and snatched up one of his hands. "Beachcomber," he said, low and urgent, holding him by the hand as if he could hold Beachcomber's mind that way, take him and turn him to Perceptor's way of thinking. "Your lesson plans are a joke, your teamwork is non-existent, your tendency to behave as if publishing requirements do not apply to you is reprehensible, and if I _ever_ let you talk me into another vacation with you I'll have to check myself into a mental institution, but you have a gift. I would never deny that. Use it. Come with me – you know the Decepticons are moving."

Beachcomber squeezed Perceptor's hand gently, and just like that Perceptor could feel any minor control he might have had over the situation simply vanish, glinting off and boiling away. "I know. But I'm not a weapons system engineer – I'm not a soldier, Perceptor. Can you imagine me in an army?"

"Well," Perceptor said, having anticipated this objection, "I can never really picture you as a professor, either, and you manage somehow."

Beachcomber shook his head. "I'm not going with you," he said.

Now Beachcomber shook his head again and said, "Perceptor, I'm not leaving. These are my students. This – The Decepticons can't make me change."

"This is not like a funding committee, Beachcomber!" Perceptor said, sharp and frustrated, "Megatron is not going to go away and leave you alone to your rambling and your disordered evaluation systems just because you give him that inscrutable look and offer him a brilliant paper!"

Beachcomber grinned. "You think my papers are brilliant?"

"No, I think they need severe editing."

"Oh."

"That's not the point!" Perceptor snapped, glaring at Beachcomber's abruptly, exaggeratedly downcast expression. "They'll kill you, you idiot, and anyone else they feel like!"

Beachcomber laughed, the same soft laugh he always laughed whenever he'd manage to provoke Perceptor into raising his voice. "I know they will."

"It's not funny!"

Beachcomber reached out to him, catching his hand loosely with a soft clink. "I know that too."

"Your CPU must have been dropped during your construction."

Beachcomber chuckled. "Seems likely."

Perceptor pulled his hand away and stood up. "Come with me."

Beachcomber folded his hands under his chin and shook his head slowly, regretfully. "You know I won't."

It was true. Perceptor did know. Beachcomber always did just as he pleased. There was no swaying him when he'd made up his mind. He was, in that way if no other, rather like the geological systems he studied.

But Perceptor had to try. "I'm leaving as soon as I finish packing my equipment."

Beachcomber stood and smiled. "I'll help."

"I don't want you to help!"

"Then I'll watch. I'm going to miss you. Things won't be quite the same without you."

Perceptor turned away. "Do as you will. I've never been able to get you to do anything else, after all."

Beachcomber stepped neatly around Perceptor, quick and light, a typical move from him, he'd never even let Perceptor do something as small as turn his back on him, and smiled up at him. "Of course not – making me do anything other than what I wanted would be very unethical."

Perceptor winced. "There's one upside- at least I won't have to live with your sense of humor."

"You see? There's a use for every piece of scrap," Beachcomber said, and laughed.

It was a very long time before Perceptor came back to that part of the world. When he did the school was broken, its tower crumbled in, its outbuildings dark and dull, where they were not smashed open. "I'm sorry," Wheeljack said, and put a hand on his shoulder. "I wasn't counting on this when I asked you along."

"I was," Perceptor told him, "But I appreciate the sentiment." He turned his head to smile at his colleague. "Let's salvage what we can. No need to let knowledge go to waste."

So they did, and Perceptor did an admirable job, he thought, of not becoming overtly melancholy as they sorted through what remained of the databanks and labs. They'd been mostly ransacked, the majority of the data removed or sabotaged, and the labs tossed every which way. There wasn't much to be had, but they took what they could use and carry.

In one of the lowest labs, near the basements that connected to the city's old service tunnels, Perceptor stopped and held up a hand to Wheeljack. He'd heard the soft clink of another set of footsteps in the hall. Wheeljack nodded – he'd heard it too, and they both raised their weapons as they turned to the door.

Perceptor was surprised when whoever was in the hall knocked. A quick set of raps on the doorframe, a bleakly cheery gesture, as if this was still a functioning school, instead of an abandoned ruin.

"Mind if I come in?" a familiar voice to go with the gesture asked, and the small form of their visitor stepped around the doorjamb.

Perceptor tracked the movement on hard learned reflex.

"I thought it was you," Beachcomber said, as laconic and amused as he had ever been, although there was the lingering dark splash of an energy burn across his shoulder and he held a gun in his hand. "I don't know anyone else who'd use a light cannon to cut open a door."

Wheeljack laughed, though Perceptor was sure that his aim hadn't wavered either.

Perceptor didn't answer. He stared across the broken room at Beachcomber, shockingly but undeniably alive and most distinctly himself. Beachcomber must have made good on that promise to resist the Decepticons however he could think to. That wasn't surprising. What was surprising was that he'd survived the attempt. Such an outcome was statistically improbable.

Perceptor lowered his gun. "You idiot," he said, "I might have shot you."

Beachcomber laughed and stepped towards him over a broken table. "Hey," he said, "It's good to see you." And he smiled his old smile, small and delighted, unshaken by time or hardship or Decepticons, the way he'd always promised to be.


End file.
